Abstract
There is a well-developed view of artifacts according to which their nature depends on the intentions of their authors or creators. However, in the modern world of artifact design and creation, typically not one but many agents are involved in the process of making an artifact. In this paper, I show how the intentional view can be maintained even for ‘collective’ artifacts having multiple authors. My approach is to combine some basic concepts that have been proposed in the study of collective intentionality with a suitable model of artifact creation that takes account of the multiple agents and processes that arise in design, engineering and manufacturing a new or existing product. In this way, we can explain how an artifactual kind can be understood via a form ofcollectiveintentionality. For the design sciences, notions such as we-intentionality and group agency can help to model different types of cooperation and, in particular, to reconcile individualism with strong forms of collectivity at a group level.
Highlights
Another philosophical direction is one that takes into account that many man-made objects have a purpose or a technical function, and so the study of technical functions and the corresponding uses of artifacts is of concern, notably in the philosophies of design and engineering
Can we reconcile the view that artifacts are determined by a collective form of intentionality with the model of artifact creation proposed by Houkes and Vermaas? They themselves are sceptical about this
It might seem at first counterintuitive to claim that the nature of an artifactual kind K depends on a form of collective intentionality, while the actors involved may hold differing conceptions of K
Summary
The study of artifacts, their creation, their nature and their ontological status is of growing interest in many fields of inquiry. Initially I would like to deal with another aspect, connected with use, but more closely linked to design: the intentionality involved in the creation or making of artifacts, by designers, producers and other stakeholders He brings together the notions of sociality, collectivity and intentionality, Schyfter does not develop them further with reference to recent work in the philosophy of sociality and the area of collective intentionality. While scholars in technology studies, including social constructivists, have looked at the impact of social groups on artifacts and technology development in particular cases, to my knowledge they have not examined in a design and development context fundamental questions about group agency and the emergence of group attitudes like beliefs and intentions and how these may bear on the design process This is the path I would like to explore further here and in doing so examine and defend the following ideas. Considered in terms of the meaning of artifactual concepts: while we can make a formal difference at an individual level between assignments and attributions of meaning, collective attributions of meaning become stipulative and constitutive
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